Due to the growth of traffic loads on networks, an administrator conventionally acquires detailed information about traffic on networks by profiling user or application traffic. One type of information is statistical information. Statistical information is accumulated information (count values) of counter numbers such as the number of packets, the number of octets, or the number of errors and the like on a network. Statistical information is used, for example, for diagnosing problems related to network performance, or as periodically acquired and accumulated historical information to be used for operation and maintenance.
Generally, an optical transmitting device manages statistical information related to alarms for each communication path. The optical transmitting device manages the statistical information by storing the statistical information in hardware (HW) counters for each communication path and a central processing unit (CPU) periodically reads out the stored statistical information. The abovementioned communication paths are packet paths established for conducting the transmission and reception of data between arbitrary nodes on a network. Conventional optical transmitting devices are expected to monitor up to 8192 communication paths per device and sound an alarm when any type of abnormality is detected as a result of reading the statistical information.
For example, if there are 4500 communication paths, hardware constituted by an optical transmitting device collects statistical information from 1 to 4500 communication paths and continuously counts the value of the statistical information using the HW counters. The CPU conducts polling to read out the statistical information at certain polling intervals, and adds the value of the statistical information to a random access memory (RAM). The HW counter includes a read clear register to clear the value of the statistical information to “0” when the CPU reads out the value of the statistical information. The CPU reports value of the statistical information that exceeds a threshold in a period (for example, 15 minutes) called a bind period (roll over) as an optical transmitting device alarm. In this way, the optical transmitting device manages the devices to acquire value of the statistical information by enabling a collaboration between the HW counter that continuously collects statistical information and the CPU operating at a certain timing.
For example, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 11-252092 is disclosed as related art.